Troth
by Selena
Summary: Four times the relationship between Anne Neville and her cousin Richard Plantagenet changed, and yet remained the same.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : This particular interpretation of historical characters and situations created and owned by Sharon Penman in her novel "The Sunne in Splendour".

 **Thanks to** : My valiant beta-reader, Kathy.

 **Author's note** : Troth: Noun: 1.) formal faith or loyalty when pledged in a solemn agreement or undertaking. 2.) : one's pledged word. Origin: Middle English: variant of truth.

* * *

 **I. October 1464**

Nobody ever told Anne and Richard they were supposed to marry one day; it was a kind of silent understanding amongst all the adults in their lives that they didn't even have to think about until the day it all turned sour, and started to vanish.

To Anne, it had been a certainty almost as great as the sky being blue, or God favouring the just, or that the cause of the just was, of course, the cause of York, since her father, the Earl of Warwick, was the mightiest of all Yorkist supporters. Anne had grown up with tales of how the House of Lancaster consisted of a witless King and an evil Queen whose son could not be the King's as much as she had with stories from the Bible. True, there had been fearful times in her early childhood after her uncle the Duke of York had been defeated by the Lancastrians and beheaded, along with her grandfather, another uncle and a cousin. But Anne had no memories of her grandfather and uncles, while fears for her father turned out to be unfounded: like an heroic knight of legend, he fought at cousin Ned's side, cousin Ned who won the day like Arthur and became King Edward IV, and so all was well. Her father being given the King's youngest brother to raise was just as self evident; they were kin, her father was the noblest lord of the land, and there was no better place for Richard to grow up. And of course they would marry one day. Her mother did not expect to have any more children, so her father would not have any sons. Her sister Isabel and Anne would be his only heirs, which effectively meant the men they'd marry would be, and her father could not choose higher, or better, than the King's younger brothers: George for Isabel, Richard for Anne. And Richard being raised by him meant he could teach him not just to be a knight, but how to be Lord of the North. Nobody ever explained this to Anne because nobody needed to, and she didn't talk with Richard about it because they both took it for granted that the other one knew. He was nearly four years older than she was, which meant he would be a man before she became a woman, and thus the day of marriage would not be that soon, but it would happen, that she never doubted, and she never thought about whether or not she wanted it to. You might as well have asked her whether she wanted to breathe.

It was an October day when the first of the cracks arrived to shake her certainty. She was eight, Richard had just turned twelve, and change was her father returning to Middleham Castle in a fury unequalled to any before in Anne's life. Change was her father shouting in the solar about how their cousin the King, Richard's brother Ned, had shamed him, had made a fool out of him.

"He's made me the laughing stock of England and all for a slut shrewd enough to keep her legs closed to him till he was hot enough to wed her!" Anne's father raged, who'd never spoken like this before in Anne's hearing. In Richard's hearing, too. She looked at her cousin and saw him white faced while her father would not stop. This was a nightmare, surely, all of it. No King of England, ever, had done what Edward had done, according to her father: married a woman not to make an alliance but for his own desire, then had kept it a secret for months while her father was negotiating on his behalf to make peace with France through a French princess, and only now when negotiations were finished had admitted to it.

And then Richard spoke up for his brother, and the nightmare got worse. "Tell me how your brother has served England with this accursed marriage!" her father shouted, and when Richard, miserably, replied: "I don't know. I know only that Ned would never act dishonourably," Anne knew she had to do something, for the fury on her father's face was such that it felt like he might actually hit Richard. He'd never done this before, either, but with the world turning upside down, anything seemed possible. There was a silver tray and wine flagon placed on the table, and she knocked them over, down to the floor. The crash was loud enough to make all people in the solar look at her, even Richard and her father. Anne burst into tears.

It worked. Her father calmed, spoke more softly, sounded more like himself again, put an arm on Richard's shoulder and gave him good words. But Anne could not forget the chasm that had opened; that sudden glimpse into a world where loyalty to her father and loyalty to their cousin the King was no longer one and the same.

She didn't sleep much that night. The next morning, she was up early and made her way across the covered wooden bridge that spanned the inner bailey and connected the keep with the west wall chambers, where the boys slept. Her dog Marion followed her; she'd say it wanted air and the opportunity to piss and shit, if someone asked. No one did. As she had hoped, Richard was up, too. He was older, he knew the King his brother better; she needed him to make sense of what had happened, and not in her father's earshot, so there wouldn't be another quarrel. She needed him to tell her something like this would not happen again.

Yet when she saw him, there was no sense of certainty about him, either. There was the same confusion in his eyes as there had been the previous evening.

"She must be truly beautiful," Anne offered, since with Richard there was no need to pretend she wanted to talk about something else first, and this was the one good thing she'd heard mentioned about the new Queen in all the angry words the previous evening. Everything else she'd heard made Edward's choice of Elizabeth Woodville sound even more incomprehensible: older than Edward, with two sons, one of whom was almost Richard's age, the widow of a knight who'd fought and died for Lancaster, daughter of a woman related to Marguerite d'Anjou, the Lancastrian Queen her father had always presented as evil incarnate to his household.

"Ned didn't marry for lust," Richard retorted, and that he'd heard her words as an accusation told her more than anything else how badly shaken he still was. "He wouldn't! He's never lacked for bedmates, and he didn't marry any of them."

This was true. Child or not, Anne was well aware of the King's reputation in this regard. She'd also seen him when he entered London victorious at her father's side, and only last year again when he'd visited York, and he truly was very handsome, looking as she'd imagined King Arthur would; all the women and girls around her had sighed, even her mother, who otherwise worshipped the ground Anne's father trod on. No, cousin Ned had never lacked for women eager to share his bed out of wedlock, no matter how much of a sin that was.

Arthur had married Guinevere for love and against Merlin's advice, and nothing good had come out of it.

"Why, then?" she asked.

Richard bit his lip, and she expected him to say what he'd told her father, that he didn't know. But instead, he said, very low: "I think...I think maybe he doesn't like it when people call your father the Kingmaker all the time, and him the King of the Nevilles' making. I think he wanted to do something to show he's his own King, and his own man."

It had been a golden October so far, the warmth lingering, and despite the early hour, the pale autumnal sun was on Anne's face. She blinked, and looked away. It felt odd, what Richard had said. On the one hand, it disturbed her further, because if the King had not just unthinkingly followed his heart, as her father had claimed, but had thought about it and deliberately had made a choice that would hurt her father, this made things even worse. On the other hand, Richard had not made up a pretty tale to calm her, but had replied as he would have to one of the boys, to Francis or Rob, her father's other wards. Anne had never lacked for fondness from her family, but as she was the youngest, she was usually treated as a petted toddler, indulged yet not taken seriously. This was probably the first conversation she'd had with Richard about something more important than what to name their dogs. Bad as the occasion was, she liked that change, and wanted it to last.

"If it was that, will there be an end to it now," she wondered, "now that he's shown it?"

Yet while she spoke, she doubted it. Her father liked being called the Kingmaker, laughed when the minstrels used that appellation in their songs and paid them well for it.

"I hope so," Richard replied, and sounded as doubtful as she felt. For the first time, it occurred to her that if something other than a short disagreement were to happen between her father and the King, Cousin Ned might not want Richard to stay with them any longer. As soon as she had thought it, she shook her head: this could not be.

"There'll be an end!" Anne said, determined to have it so. "Friends argue all the time. So do family. Just think of Francis and Rob. Or Bella and me," she added with a rueful smile, for her older sister Isabel had started to bleed this year and started to use the phrase "you wouldn't understand, Anne, you're such a child" a lot as a consequence. "And my father always said your brother isn't just cousin and friend to him but brother as well, after all those battles they survived together."

"That's true," Richard said, looking a bit cheerier. "Nothing can break such a bond."

Which meant, Anne thought, they'd never have to choose sides. It was an ugly enough feeling having to do so when Rob and Francis were quarrelling.

Gareth, her favourite Arthurian knight whom she'd named Richard's wolfhound after only yesterday, was slain by his friend and brother-in-arms Lancelot, who'd almost been a father to him. She'd always preferred not to think about that part of the tale. Why did she have to remember now?

"No, nothing can," Anne said quietly.


	2. August 1469

**II. August 1469**

Richard was near seventeen and Anne thirteen by the time nobody had to tell them marriage between them was now impossible, though several people did, anyway. Any hope that the ever worsening estrangement between Richard's brother the King and his cousin the Earl of Warwick would reverse itself, would end, was buried when Anne's father actually took his cousin and King prisoner, and executed two of the Queen's Woodville kin while he was at it, for no other reason than they _were_ the Queen's father and brother.

A marriage had taken place between a Plantagenet prince and his Neville cousin that year, though. Richard's brother George allied with their cousin Warwick, openly defied Ned and wed Anne's sister Isabel. George made no secret about what he hoped for from this marriage, either, and it wasn't just Isabel's inheritance. He hoped the Kingmaker would make another King, would force Edward to abdicate in George's favour. Elizabeth Woodville had borne Edward daughters, but no son yet, so George was still his brother's heir, and determined to make the most of it.

It was, Richard thought, and years later cursed his lack of imagination, surely the worst thing that could ever happen to his family, to any of them. He did his best to rally men to help Ned and in the meantime clung to the hope that the man who raised him would surely not murder his brother, even though Warwick had the power to do so now.

Richard could have been at Warwick's side in Middleham right now, just like George, his cousin had made that clear. Ned had it made as clear that any marriage to Anne now would be a declaration for Warwick. That was a choice which was no choice at all. Anne was dear to him, and he's seen far more of his cousin of Warwick than he'd ever seen of the Duke of York, his dead father, felt more for him, too. But Ned was his sovereign and the person he loved most in the world. He had to keep faith with Ned.

In the end, the men he found to march with him to Middleham, along with virtually every peer of the realm, were enough to pressure Warwick into letting Edward go rather than openly make war. Richard should have been relieved, but now that the implicit threat to Ned's life was gone, all the thoughts he'd pushed aside when marching rose to the surface. There was no way Warwick would forgive him for this. And with George having chosen to marry Isabel, Edward's orders be dammed, Anne probably thought he was rejecting _her_ , not just her father's rebellion.

She was nowhere in sight when he entered Middleham to, as he said, "escort his brother the King back to London". Isabel was, Francis was, the Countess of Warwick was, but no Anne. He gave Isabel a message for her, asked Anne to meet him at the little chapel off the great hall, and Isabel promised to deliver it but also said she didn't think Anne would come.

"I'm sorry about the Neville girl," Ned had said. "It would have been a good match, once upon a time. But I can't let our cousin get closer to the throne than he is already." He must have seen something in Richard's face, for he added, with a frown: "You're not in love with her, are you, Dickon?"

Was he? Truth be told, he hadn't thought of Anne precisely in those terms. Anne was Anne; he'd have to go back to his earliest childhood in Ludlow to remember a time when she hadn't been in his life, and he'd never thought there would be a time when she wasn't. He hadn't realised quite how much he wanted her to be until there had been so much bad blood between his brother and her father that he had to leave Middleham. Now he was back for what was probably the last time, even if by some miracle Warwick and Ned could maintain a frosty barbed truce from now on. If he didn't see her now, he might not for years to come. And he'd leave her with the idea that he hadn't cared at all. That they had never spoken of love didn't mean it wasn't there, he knew it was, even if he couldn't say what kind of love it was.

When Anne finally came, he'd almost given up hope. He'd tried to pray, for reconciliation, though that prayer had not been answered before, and then had understood he couldn't pray right now. He was too angry. With Warwick, with George, with Ned, even, and with himself. It made no sense, but there it was.

"Welcome home," Anne said, her face still in deep shadows until she came closer, and the candle light showed him she'd changed in the last few months. She'd still been more child than woman when he'd left. Or maybe it was he who'd changed, seeing what he hadn't been able to see before; he'd lain with women now.

"This is not my home anymore," Richard said, though it was, that was the worst of it. Where else? Not at Ned's court. He didn't despise Elizabeth Woodville the way his cousin Warwick did, who blamed her for everything Ned had ever denied him. Truth to tell, she was still a stranger to Richard, and they had yet to have a conversation about more than formalities. No, it was the court itself he didn't much like, everyone constantly trying to get more and better positions for themselves, and changing alliances along with fashions if they felt the wind blew differently. The North was better. He missed the North. But the North belonged to his Neville kin, and he'd just burned his bridges with them for good.

"Then what am I?" Anne asked. "If this is not your home anymore. Am I a stranger now, too?"

"Never that", he said, and stepped towards her to take her hands. He'd always been the smallest, not just the youngest of the men in his family, and she'd grown; they now almost saw eye to eye. Hers, usually a gold-flecked brown, were dark in candle light.

"What then?" she asked, and there was a sharpness to her tone that was new.

"Bella said she's with child already," Richard said, trying for levity, which was how Ned would have handled it. "So we're to be uncle and aunt to the same child, aren't we? In addition to cousins."

"Bella thinks that child should one day sit on the throne of England. Did she tell you that as well?" Anne asked, with a brittle cheer that barely hid that anger and grief he felt himself, and could not put away. "That's what our father made her think. That it is not treason to plot for this, because Ned has proven unworthy, so George should be king, and a Neville child after him. And either I am a traitor to tell you this, or I was already a traitor to listen and say nothing."

"Those were just dreams and foolishness, not treason," he said, to calm himself as much as her. "If your father truly wanted to make George a king, he would have..."

What? Killed Ned? But Richard had been afraid Warwick would do just that. He'd never said so out loud, but he'd been afraid it would happen, that it had already happened, every step of that damn march to the castle which could never be his home again.

"It will never happen,'" he ended abruptly.

"No," Anne said. "Because he doesn't really want George on the throne, no matter what Isabel thinks. He could win over George so easily, and that means anyone can if he flatters George enough. Father has no respect for him, none. But you know whom he'd put on the throne in place of Ned, Richard? Do you?"

She was wrong. She had to be. He thought about her father and the accusation in her father's eyes, earlier today, the thinly veiled rage when Warwick congratulated him, for Ned had rewarded Richard's "escort" by appointing him Lord Constable of England. No, his cousin hated him now, as much as Warwick hated Ned, surely. What love there'd been was gone.

The thought that there was still regard, and that it might express itself by wishing for yet more treason, that thought made him ill, and yet had some weird comfort to it, for it meant that Warwick had not feigned affection in their years together, had thought him more than a weapon just in case.

"If he really planned this, even for a moment, he never knew me at all", Richard whispered.

Her hands in his, which had been still until now, abruptly withdrew, but not in a gesture of rejection. She put them on his face, palms wide open, as if to hide it from herself.

"I know," she murmured. "I knew you'd come for your brother, that you'd be true to him. But I want - I want so many things. I want none of this to ever have happened. I want to be proud of my father, and not ashamed that he's committed treason now, I want to be loyal to my king, and not angry he's brought this strife to our family, I want you not to feel sorry for me. That's why you're here, is it not? Because you think I'm just like my sister, full of foolish dreams, and wanted you to do just what George did. Because you still think I'm a child. I'm not!"

Despite her words, there were tears in her voice now. He couldn't see her any longer. He just felt her fingers on his skin, neither cradling nor stroking; simply there, Anne's fingers, warm to the touch and surprisingly long. No, no longer a child.

"I think you're my friend," he said, finally finding words for what was in his heart ever since he'd left Warwick's household. "Still. And I wanted to tell you I'll be true to you, too. Even if we can't marry. I'll be your true friend, always."

For a moment longer, they remained like this; standing together, inches apart. Then her hands fell away.

"And nothing can break such a bond?" she asked sadly. "Oh Richard, we know better now."

And with that, she spun away and left. He did not see her again until they were all mounted and ready to depart Middleham. He'd seen the silent inquiry in Francis' eyes and shaken his head; what had been said between Anne and himself had been too private to share with anyone. He was saying goodbye to Francis, who remained Warwick's ward and thus had to reside with Richard's cousin, when Anne came running into the bailey, eyes swollen, hair unbound. He'd not seen her like this since she'd been a little girl; her mother had been far too concerned that the Kingmaker's daughters represent Neville glory to allow anything but a lady's elegance and seemliness in their appearances these recent years. He'd turned in his saddle, then swung his horse about so he could meet her halfway. Her face was flushed, and he could hear her shallow breathing; she must have run all the way from her chamber.

There was both too much and too little left to say, so neither of them spoke. He put his hand on her cheek, the way she'd done with him in the chapel, and for a moment, he wanted to kiss her. But that would have been a promise he wasn't yet able to keep, so he let her go again, and followed his brother.


	3. May 1471

**III. May 1471**

Any trace of childhood was well and truly gone by the time Anne saw Richard again. She was fifteen now, had been married and widowed, and if her certainties had been badly shaken before they'd since been erased with fire.

Her father, who'd taught her to loathe the House of Lancaster, who'd infamously declared Marguerite d'Anjou a whore in public and sworn her son could not be King Harry's son when the boy was born, her father had made peace with the exiled Marguerite, sworn to restore King Harry to the throne and bring down his cousin Edward. To seal the bargain, or, as people said, as assurance since both parties continued to heartily despise each other and expect betrayal at any moment, the Earl of Warwick gave his younger daughter to Marguerite's son.

Anne had always thought of herself as an obedient and loving daughter, as a good Christian. Through her marriage, she discovered she had inherited her father's capacity for all consuming hate. In her more rational moments, she knew that neither Marguerite nor her son were monsters. Outside of childhood tales about an evil French Queen, Marguerite turned out to be a proud woman who'd fought by any means to secure her son's inheritance because if she didn't, no one else would. She'd been in penniless exile for years now, and her small circle of Lancastrian nobles still showed her a loyalty that could not be bought, but had been earned. As for her son, Edouard, he'd almost been the sole person at the exile Lancastrian court who bothered to be kind to Anne's sister Isabel, and Isabel, who'd borne and lost her child at sea with only Anne and her mother to attend her when the Nevilles left England, had badly needed kindness. All this, Anne knew. But it was hard to weigh it against the daily hell that was her marriage.

Maybe Edouard hadn't been any more glad to marry the daughter of a man who'd slandered his mother and called him a bastard than Anne had been to marry the son of a woman who'd beheaded her grandfather and two of her uncles, and put their heads on the walls of York. Maybe it was her silent, unhappy obedience on their marriage night that turned him against her, for Edouard had inherited his mother's famed beauty and was not used to unwilling bedmates, had never even considered the idea of a woman not glad for his touch, and took the discovery that Anne wasn't as an insult to his manhood. Whatever the reason, he'd quickly turned the consummation of their marriage into a punishment. Punishment that grew worse each time it happened. As for his mother, she hadn't been thrilled about the necessity of coming to terms with Warwick at all, had kept Anne's father on his knees for near half an hour before deigning to speak with him. She certainly hadn't been glad at the idea of Warwick's daughter as her daughter-in-law. When Marguerite, who missed nothing, deduced the mutual misery after the wedding night, she'd blamed Anne, and barely even bothered with politeness in public thereafter.

When news came that George, very aware that he'd lost all use and purpose for the Warwick camp and never had one for the Lancastrians, switched sides again and returned to his brothers, it was but the prologue; the battle that was to bring victory to Lancaster went for York instead, and Anne's father lost not just the day, but his life. The girl she had been would have cried her heart out. She had adored him once. He was her father. The woman she'd become listened in numbness and knew what that news meant for her: her use for the House of Lancaster was over, and Marguerite would have had Anne's marriage annulled as soon as she no longer needed the remaining Neville knights who had not gone back to the House of York.

"So you see," Anne had told her sister Isabel, bitterness, grief and rage all coming together to put words in her mouth that would have been unthinkable to her not long ago, "our father has not died in vain."

She hadn't known she could feel anything else again until Coventry. By that time, York had won for good; her husband Edouard had died, and Marguerite along with her household, which still included Anne, had been captured. And there they were, her cousins of York. Ned, who'd won his kingdom twice in battle now, greeted her as a kinswoman, not a traitor. Then he made himself scarce to leave her alone with Richard, Richard who'd shed the last of his boyhood since last they met as surely as she'd stopped being a girl. Strange and familiar at the same time. Looking at her not with pity, which would have been almost as bad as scorn, but with joy and wonder. That was when she'd started to hope again.

Anne had never experienced courtship before. It hadn't been something expected of children, which was what she and Richard were when their families had still planned for them to wed, and Edouard of Lancaster certainly had never tried to win her over any more than she'd tried to please him. And her status first as the Kingmaker's daughter, then as Prince Edouard's unwanted wife had prevented any other aspiring knights to dare as much as try flirtation. She didn't even know whether what was happening between her and Richard now could be called courtship, not as the songs described it; he did not suddenly start to praise her eyes, or mouth, or voice, and she had yet to hand over a favour, or set him challenges. Instead, they talked as they had always done, confiding in each other, even those darker feelings as the fierce gladness she'd felt when hearing her husband was dead, something she'd never thought herself capable of before. Something else was new, though, and it had started the first time they'd kissed, a kiss of greeting, true, and tender, yet far from cousinly.

In her dreams, those dreams she'd had no matter how much she denied it once her father started to wage war against his King, it had all been very simple; Richard proposed, they married, and went home again, to Middleham. She'd never guessed that dead Edouard would have her in his power still, at the worst moments. When she discovered what a kiss could be, when she wanted to feel Richard's hands around her, the memories of Edouard's hands on her came, and she grew cold and still. She hadn't known the body remembered even if the soul didn't want it to.

He noticed; of course he did. She told herself that he wasn't like Edouard, wouldn't see this behaviour as an insult to him, but at the same time, a cold vicious little voice inside her whispered that she had no idea about what Richard was like with a woman. When they were children, she might as well have been his little sister. She tried to explain, stumbling over her words because nobody had ever taught her how to speak about these things. The sudden awkwardness between them was excruciating. He said he understood and swore he'd never hurt her, which wasn't as reassuring as it should have been. Not that she didn't believe him. At least her heart did. Her body was not so sure. But the assurance was something that shouldn't even have been necessary between them, and yet it was. Had they become as strange as that to each other? Now, when there were no more torn loyalties between them, now that they were truly for the first time promised to wed, not out of an unspoken understanding, but because they'd both said so out loud, and his brother had finally granted permission? Now, when they had a future again?

 _You don't know him anymore_ , that voice which had grown in her as her world had turned upside down said, relentlessly. _And you never knew him in this way._

"You've been with other women," she blurted out. It was an assumption, not something anyone had ever told her. In truth, his brother the King was so famous for sinning on a grand scale with nearly every female who smiled at him that the gossips never even bothered with George and Richard. But while Holy Church taught that any coupling other than that between man and wife was forbidden, Anne knew very well that in practice, it was only the bride who was supposed to enter a marriage untouched.

Well, she was no longer a maid. It became important, suddenly, to no longer guess, but to know.

"Yes," Richard said, quietly, not denying it. Anne exhaled the breath she had not known she was holding.

"With whom?" she asked, and then, because after what she'd told him about her marriage, she was bereft of shame: "What was it like?"

"Anne..."

"You promised," she said. "To be my true friend, always. I have no other friend to tell me."

He swallowed, looked away, then faced her again, his grey eyes searching for something in her that she wasn't sure he found. "There were some whores," he said. "Not many, but some, in London, and in Burgundy, when we were in exile, Ned and I. And there were... twice I loved. I have two children, Anne."

That hurt. She told herself that she hadn't expected him to live chaste and wait for her, when there hadn't even been a reason to believe she would ever be free to marry him; Sir Galahad had never been her favourite in the stories. And knowing about the whores stung a little, but only a little. Two children, though; and "loved". That made it real.

They must have loved him, too, these women. Enough to risk their reputation, all their future. True, a King's brother had enough money to provide a mistress with a dowry, especially if she'd borne his child, and there were surely men who looked more for such a dowry and fertility than for a maid. But if he chose not to provide for them at all, there was no claim these women could make. They must have known that. Must have learned the same lesson Anne did, any woman did, no matter whether high born or low born: that to give up your chastity was to invite ruin.

To do something like this for a man, without marriage to make it duty: surely no woman would if all her body felt was pain.

If she asked Richard for their names, he'd think that she was jealous, and she was. But that wasn't why she wanted to know. If it wasn't so utterly impossible, she'd go to them and ask what it was like, to lie with him. To hunger for the touch of a man without your body's sudden betrayal when the memories came. To want him so much that nothing else counted, not even peril to your soul and life.

"What was it like?" she asked him instead, again, hating to sound so helpless and raw.

"There was joy," he said. "I can't say more, other than that it is over."

He meant he didn't _want_ to say more, Anne thought. Because men might boast to each other of their bedmates, but did not discuss them with another woman. Or because he did not want to betray these women whom he'd loved to her by speaking of them in this way. Yet she had told him about Edouard. Was she unjust? Maybe she was. This was all new, and there was still no one else to ask but each other.

"You can tell me the names of your children, and how old they are" she said, not least because whatever was true about the mothers, surely Richard would want to keep the children in his life. He told her and she couldn't help it; she counted. When the first was born, she'd been living through the misery of that flight to France, on a ship with her screaming sister giving birth, bereft of any comfort Richard's mistress undoubtedly had had; Anne remembered the blood on her hands, and the tiny, tiny corpse at the end of it all. When the second was born, she'd stood in the royal chapel in Amboise, becoming Edouard of Lancaster's wife.

She looked at Richard and thought: _you were happy when I was in hell_. It was selfish, it was unfair to think so, and she hated herself for it, but the words came into her head regardless, and from the way his face altered, she could tell that he must have guessed them.

"I shouldn't have said..."

You shouldn't have _done_ , Anne thought, and bit her lips. What was done could not be undone. What was thought could not be unthought. But it was still up to them to make other choices. She had to believe that.

"I asked you to speak,", she interrupted him. "We don't lie to each other, remember? No matter what."

"Then tell me what you thought, right now," he said, and now she was the one to look away, then made hersel look at him again. She forced the words out of her mouth, knowing they could not lead to anything good.

"I thought that you were happy when I was in hell."

He had grey eyes, and the contrast to his dark hair and sunburned skin usually made them look bright and open. But now they reminded her of blind windows, revealing nothing of the rooms inside.

"I see."

They parted like this, bar a few polite phrases. The next day marked London's official welcome celebration to King Edward, and Anne didn't see Richard on her own again, nor did she expect him to. She spend the day at what used to be the Neville's town residence in London, the Herber, and now served as home to her sister Isabel and to George. George made no bones about the fact he considered Anne to be his ward, simply because she was his wife's younger sister, and that he disapproved of Richard's courtship. Anne had known George for as long as she'd known Richard, and she knew what this was about. Her mother had left Anne and Isabel to face the news of Warwick's death on their own; she'd rushed to Beaulieu Abbey and claimed sanctuary as soon as she'd heard. And that was where the Countess of Warwick still resided. This meant that George, as Isabel's husband, was now in effect in possession of the entire Neville inheritance, at least until Anne was married again. And George had no intention of sharing.

George took part in the celebrations, though, just like Isabel did, and thus neither of them were there when a stunned servant told Anne that the Duke of Gloucester wished to speak with her, a good two hours after sunset. Anne hastily got dressed again, and found Richard waiting in the solar. She thought that he, too, would be at his oldest brother's side at the revels, but he was dressed far too sombrely for that. In fact, his chosen emblem, the blancsanglier, was the only bright colour, and that was on his cloak.

"Do you remember," he asked abruptly, without a greeting, "what they told us about the first Lancaster king? How he took the throne?"

It was the last thing she'd expected him to say. She was so surprised that she wasted no time on wondering about his reason and simply replied to the question.

"He took it from his cousin. Because King Richard had been a bad King, and weak. And so they made him abdicate, in favour of his cousin."

Like her royal father-in-law, whom Anne had never met, the unfortunate, simple and saintly Harry of Lancaster, deposed since Edward at age 18 defeated Marguerite d'Anjou for the first time, and since then a prisoner in the Tower, through her father's rebellion, through Edward's own brief imprisonment, through her father's flight and return, through Edward's and Richard's flight and exile in Burgundy, through Edward's return and her father's defeat. Nothing had ever changed for the Lancaster king, the third of his line. Now that his only son had died, there would not be a fourth.

"But that was not all," Richard said, and Anne began to realize where this was going. The last of her drowsiness and lingering mixture of shame, fear and longing left her. She was very awake now, and very cold, despite the open fireplace in the solar.

"Then King Richard died," she said slowly. "Of a broken heart, his cousin the new king claimed, but my father was told by his father that they'd starved him to death. To make sure there would not be uprisings in favour of the former king."

Richard's birthday was in October; he'd turn nineteen then. And yet this May night, he suddenly appeared to her much older, and she could see what he'd look like at thirty. It was as if someone had chiselled shadows in his face.

"That's what your father told me, too. And said that while he understood that reason, the new King shouldn't have done it. It left his reign with a blood debt. To kill an anointed King, he said, and not in battle, not as part of a trial by combat, to kill him as a helpless prisoner, that was something even the people who'd raged against him could not condone, and something God could not forgive. Because how could there be atonement if the perpetrator kept profiting from the sin? I thought about these words so often, Anne. Never more than when he had Ned in his power, your father. That's how I convinced myself he wouldn't do it. Regicide. The sin God can't forgive."

When Edward had come to see the captured Marguerite and her household at Coventry, Anne had heard Marguerite say, sharp and precise: "Tell me of my husband. Does he still live?" And when Edward had nodded while his men were murmuring angrily at the implication, the Lancastrian Queen had added: "For how much longer?"

Edward had told Marguerite then she wouldn't be able to provoke him into sending her to the block. He'd never answered her question.

Anne's father, who had first loved and then hated him, had called his cousin Ned many things - a brilliant battle commander, a man with no more morals than a tomcat when it came to women, lazy, indulgent - but one thing he'd never called him was stupid. If anything had happened to Harry of Lancaster for as long as Marguerite's son was alive, it simply would have made Edouard, young and at liberty to rally men, the next Lancastrian claimant of the throne. But now Edouard was dead. And there was only one royal member of the House of Lancaster left in this world. Only one.

"But surely," Anne said, feeling as if she was entering a labyrinth with only her own words to guide her, "surely there would not have been any uprisings in favour of King Richard. If his cousin had let him live. After all, the people had turned against that King a long time ago. That's why his cousin came to power in the first place."

"That's what I thought when your father told the story," Richard replied tonelessly. "But he thought there was only one way to be sure - the first of the Lancaster kings."

Edward had made Richard Lord Constable of England, that day in Middleham. Richard still was Lord Constable. And it was the Lord Constable's office to pass judgment upon the guilty. Upon the guilty...or those the King wished to die.

Anne's heart hammered. She had been raised to believe Harry of Lancaster had been a bad King, well meaning but weak at best, and mad, a simpleton even, at worst. She had never seen him. She had no reason to feel loyalty to him. But he was, without the shadow of a doubt, the Lord's Anointed, had been since he was crowned as a child. Nothing, no weakness and no madness, could take this away.

They said the first of the Lancaster kings had died still bargaining with God for forgiveness for his cousin's murder. They said even his son, the great Henry, fifth of his name, the victor of Agincourt, had felt the curse of regicide upon his House; and he'd died young, leaving only the simpleton currently in the Tower behind, as a helpless child, third and last of the Lancaster kings. Who could look at that, and not call it God's punishment for regicide?

"You said that I was happy when you were in hell," Richard murmured. "You asked me about joy, Anne. So I'm asking you now. What is hell like?"

 _Ned would never act dishonourably_ , he'd said at age twelve, defending his brother, and believed it, utterly.

She knew then, as certainly as if she'd been present, that Edward must have ordered Harry of Lancaster's death today. That he told Richard to see it done.

 _The sin God can't forgive._ Because there could be no true repentance as long as there was profit from the crime.

For a moment longer, the horror of it held her utterly still, the sense of a chasm opening beneath her. And then she thought, and said: "It is not infinite."

She went to him, and took his hands into her own, the way he'd done with her in Middleham. "Hell isn't, Richard. Not where there is love."

She'd found her way back. Not to her childhood, free of care. But back to hope again.

His hands in hers were warm. "Nothing can break such a bond", he said, as if he meant it as hope and warning both. When she leaned forward to kiss him, she was aware that the memory of Edouard would still continue to revisit her. But for the first time, she was certain it would not plague her forever.


	4. April 1472

**IV. April 1472**

It was April when Richard and Anne returned to Middleham, and the spring winds coming down off the Pennines brought the clean smell of grass and trees with them. Three years after saying goodbye in the chapel of Middleham Castle, there it was again: home.

They had been married for a few weeks. They were still learning how to be so. Richard had not expected this. He hadn't expected either the wanting, the desire he'd started to feel from the moment he'd seen Anne again at Coventry, changed and familiar at the same time, nor the discovery that Lancaster, curse him, had taught her only the worst of what a man could do to a woman.

There was no wisdom from anyone to guide them out of this particular maze. He could have asked Ned, of course, for he suspected that what Ned didn't know of the ways of the flesh was not worth knowing, but that would have felt like betraying Anne's secrets. And no woman he himself had lain with had not been ardent from the start.

There were other, harmless things to learn anew as well, small things that made a daily life, and this, too, was unexpected after all their years together. He'd known about the dishes Anne had liked, her favourite colour or how she played the lute if she did not wish to talk. He hadn't known that she was a light sleeper, or that her hair, freed from all braids and veils, reached to her hips and took a long time to brush. He'd known about her dislike of Lancelot, still remembered her arguments with Isabel about this in the solar of this very castle when Anne had championed Sir Gawaine and the other Orkney brothers in the debates about the best Knights of the Round Table, but he hadn't known she preferred lying on the left side of a bed to the right. He'd known the colour of her eyes, but not that she invariably had cold feet at the end of the day and curled up to quickly become warm.

Sharing a bed could mean so many things; this, too was something new. It even meant learning the way another person breathed, he'd found; their rhythms, what meant ease and what forced stillness. He had to, because he was resolved to keep his promise to Anne that he would never hurt her.

And then there were the dreams and ghosts; his, as well as hers. When his brother had made him the new Lord of the North, essentially asking him to be their cousin Warwick without the treason, Richard hadn't been aware of how it would feel to be at Middleham and literally sit in Warwick's chair. The castle hadn't been used other than by a small guard since the Earl had left, and so his possessions were still everywhere; down to his gloves for hawking, and of course his bed in the great chamber. Richard hadn't seen Warwick at the battle of Barnet save from a distance, and then again after it was over, when the man was dead along with many others. He hadn't allowed himself to grieve, telling himself that Warwick wasn't worth it: whatever his grievances with Ned, their cousin had turned betrayer first, and in the end ambition had him made barter Anne away to Lancaster, which could have destroyed her.

But it was impossible to be here and not remember the man who'd taught him damn near everything. The cousin without a son who'd given him time and attention when Richard had been without a father, and without that many memories of one. Anne's father, and there was the rub. If he did not know what he felt about the man, what must it be like for Anne?

She didn't speak of him. She spoke of her uncle, Johnny Neville, who'd sided with his brother but had died wearing the colours of the House of York under his armour; of Isabel, whom she wasn't likely to see again soon, due to the furious, bitter way George had fought Richard's and Anne's marriage; of Thomas, Richard's squire since their childhood in Middleham, who'd died at Barnet just as the Neville brothers had done. But not of her parents, the mother who'd abandoned her and Isabel to their fates, but now wanted to leave sanctuary and rejoin them, or her father, who'd been the lode star of their lives for so long.

They never spoke again about something else, either; what had happened on the evening London had celebrated the victory of the House of York. What he had told her as clearly as he could bring himself to. The next day, Edward had announced that Harry of Lancaster had died of grief over his son's death. Had given him a stately funeral and wake at St. Paul's, to ensure that truly, all the world did know that he was dead, and the cause of Lancaster with him.

By now, Richard had killed in battle, often; had ordered several deaths as Lord Constable. He didn't do it lightly, but it did not haunt him, either, not when it had to be done. But this was different, he'd known it was from the moment Ned first raised the subject, and he still was convinced eventually, the House of York would pay the same price for it the House of Lancaster had done for the same deed three generations earlier.

 _A sin God could not forgive._

 _As to that, Dickon_ , Ned had said, _I'll know only when called to account before the Throne of God. But for now, what does concern me most is the throne at Westminster._

There was no sign that Ned had been wrong. His Queen had now given him a son, so George was no longer his heir, and the future of the House of York assured. Marguerite d'Anjou was broken and returned to France, and the remaining nobles that had supported Lancaster now showed themselves eager to join the Yorkist court, even the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Harry of Lancaster's cousin.

But Anne still wasn't the only one to have bad dreams at night.

They celebrated the spring festival of Corpus Christi in the town of York, their first as husband and wife, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the new lord and lady of the North. York, for all that it was the duchy that gave Richard's House its name, had long been Lancastrian in loyalty. His father's head had been put on York's walls, wearing a paper crown, along with those of his brother Edmund, and of Anne's grandfather and uncle. More recently, York had transferred its loyalty to the Earl of Warwick, had sided with him against Edward. Ned had left it at Richard's discretion as how to proceed with York further. It was the biggest city of the North, so it seemed clear to him that punishment would defeat the purpose of his entire task: to bind the North to the crown, for good.

"How did your father make them love him?" he asked Anne when they rode towards Micklegate Bar, where once their family's heads had been impaled.

"I wish I knew," she said, staring ahead at the city walls. "I wish I knew how he did it with anyone, so I could stop."

There it was; that wound they hadn't talked about, till now.

"I thought I wished that, too," he said, not looking at her. "But now I think - Anne, you said it yourself. Hell isn't where there's love."

She didn't reply, but she made her mare step closer and reached across to touch his hand.

There were rooms prepared for them at the Augustine friary, across the Ouse Bridge and into Conyng Street. The prior wasn't the only one waiting after they and their guards had dismounted; so did the Lord Mayor, with several councillors, their wives, and children who carried flowers for her. Hyacinths, jonquils, and even a very early white rose, the symbol of the royal House of York. Everyone was smiling, but there was a palpable aura of nervousness around them.

"Your graces are most welcome," the Mayor said, sweating, and pushed one of the children forward, a girl who clearly was supposed to hand over the white rose to Anne, while the other children clutched their jonquils. The girl's lips trembled. "I want to keep it!" she exclaimed. "It's the first!"

The adults looked horrified. Anne laughed; Richard hadn't heard her laugh like this in a long time, carefree and delighted, like the girl who'd accepted a dare from Francis Lovell to drink an entire cup of Malmsey wine in one go.

"Then keep it you shall!", she exclaimed, the gracious lady of the manor she had been raised to be, just as he had been trained to rule, and by the same man. "You are a flower of York yourself, my girl, and I shall carry you in my heart."

The sighs of relief were audible, and no one bothered to disguise them.

"Her Grace and I are children of the North," Richard said, smiling himself. "We've been looking forward to our homecoming for a long time."

The Mayor started to relax, and Richard, bearing in mind that graciousness was all very well, but should not look too easily gained, added, dropping the smile: "After all, we've come to stay in this domain for good. You'll not get rid of us again, good sirs."

After the protestations had died down, Anne went to supervise the distribution of the packhorses they'd brought with them, for acts of charity, too, were a lord and lady's duties, especially on high holidays. They had brought food and blankets for the poor of York, which the sixteen hospitals of the city would receive. Richard started to hear the various petitions the Mayor and the Councillors brought to him, and then those of the citizens that waited outside the friary who'd found no Councillor to speak for them. He didn't see Anne again until the evening meal, and had no chance to talk with her alone until they were in bed.

"So many of the beggars now are men who lost their limbs in battle," Anne said, and shivered. "I think - I think that is what they most need to know. That the war between York and Lancaster is over now, for good. That they'll lose nothing more. They'll love you then, if you can give them this."

 _If one more death is the price for peace_ , he'd told himself, carrying out Ned's orders. It had been done quickly. But he still remembered Harry of Lancaster telling Ned _"I do know, cousin, that in your hands my life will not be in danger"_ , and he knew that it had been murder, and always would be, no matter the reason.

He was capable of it, he knew that now.

"I'll try."

She'd finished combing her hair, and slipped between the sheets that covered the prior's bed, for they'd been given the best room of the friary. There were furs, too, for Yorkshire nights were cold, even in spring. He put his arms around Anne and formed a spoon around her, something they'd quickly gotten into the habit of doing, to get warm.

"Tomorrow," she murmured, "tomorrow, after the procession, I'll ask the bishop to have masses read. For Johnny, and for Thomas, and for..." she hesitated, and then said it: "For my father."

She turned towards him, and he felt her hands on his face.

"I want to be at peace, too," Anne said. One of her hands, stroking his face, slid downwards, trailing his neck, shoulder, back. "I don't want endings anymore. I want beginnings."

He kissed her, felt her drawing closer still, then felt her leg slide over his. Her breathing quickened, steady and true.

"Then let us begin."


End file.
